Business

Why You Should Buy an Espresso Machine for the Office

This article is part of DBA, a new series on Mashable that features insights from leaders in entrepreneurship, venture capital and management.

You're going to make mistakes when you're a first-time founder. It might be renting out office space that’s too big (or too small), spending too much on holiday parties or hiring a sales team when your product isn't ready to be seen by the masses. But the biggest mistake I've seen founders make is being less than generous when it comes to investing in people.

Unless you're in manufacturing, your highest investment is always going to be people — salaries, benefits, recruiting, company events, the list goes on. And since it’s people who build and sell your product, and recruit others to do the same, you should heavily invest in their happiness and productivity. Instead of spending an exorbitant amount of money on office furniture, pull an Amazon.com (creating desks out of doors) and spend money where it matters — on the people sitting at those tables.

In-office caffeine drip for the team

I’m a proponent of expensive office coffee machines. That endorsement is often met with laughs, but consider the ROI of a $5,000 espresso machine. Without it, your team members will likely make at least one, if not multiple, trips to Starbucks or Blue Bottle throughout the day. They'll yawn through afternoon meetings and, to make it worse, they might groan about their coffee addiction all the while.

And if you're more analytical, just do the math: If you have an employee that makes $100,000 a year or $50/hour ($65/hour "fully loaded"), that means a 15-minute Starbucks run will cost you $16 of lost productivity. If he or she’s making that coffee run two times a day, that’s $160 of lost productivity per week. So when it comes to keeping 10 engineers caffeinated, the $5,000 machine pays for itself in less than a month.

It’s more than just that straight productivity. If it costs just a few thousand dollars to make your team happier and more present, then that Jura or De'Longhi machine — or many of them as you spread across multiple floors of a building — is a no-brainer.

Companies that eat together, stay together

Many start-ups promote "free lunch" as an employee perk. Of course, the smartest ones have an agenda behind it — and as a recent blog post from Highfive noted, it’s not just to make sure their employees are well-nourished or to to save a few bucks.

Despite the open workspaces often synonymous with startups, teams inevitably become siloed. Facilitating regular opportunities for individuals that wouldn’t normally come across each other to chat not only leads to more ideation, but also increased productivity. Plus, encouraging cross-department collaboration over meals forges relationships and networks across (what are often) rapidly growing teams — and cements a sense of community. As Kevin Kuske put it in an interview with Entrepreneur, "In the world of a creative economy, work is better with trust. It’s better with social bonds. When you’re trying to build trust, creativity and relationships, you want to bring barriers down and get people to start acting more neutrally, and food is just a way to do that."

You can bet that at most companies with "free lunch" policies, taking the food back to your desk isn’t an option.

Monitors galore and comfy chairs for the individual

Erik Martin, general manager of Reddit, at work in the company's offices.

Image: Reddit

In addition to investing in your team's happiness, successful companies also allocate capital for their individual employees’ productivity. When a developer asks for three computer monitors so they can split their screens and code faster, you should say "done" and have them delivered tomorrow. If you hear your employees complaining about their comfort levels, start shopping for ergonomic chairs or standing desks.

Don't be penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to your employees’ comfort and consequent ability to get work done (or not). After all, the more productive your employees are, the better your products will be.

Rugby jerseys for the long haul

We give every new employee a rugby jersey featuring their employee number on the back as a first-day welcoming present. I like to think of those jerseys, wine and cheese Wednesdays, company-sponsored races and the photo booth at our third birthday party as investments in the long-term success of our company. As my co-founder Todd McKinnon has said, it takes a long time to build an important technology company. Your CFO might not immediately see the ROI of company events or ergonomic chairs, but by allocating capital to these outings (without going overboard), you’re investing in your company’s future with a team that cares about your vision and each other.

Founders should never cut corners when it comes to investing in team members. When you’re spending money fueling your team’s coffee addictions or helping them avoid poor posture, remember that you're also funneling your capital directly to their productivity, happiness and future success at your company — and that’s priceless.

Frederic Kerrest is the co-founder and COO of Okta, a cloud-based identity and access management provider. Frederic also currently serves as an advisor to early stage software companies, and as a mentor at the MIT Tr...More

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